About taginfo

Building on taginfo

The taginfo software

OpenStreetMap uses tags to add meaning to geographic objects. There
is no fixed list of those tags. New tags can be invented and used as needed.
Everybody can come up with a new tag and add it to new or existing objects.
This makes OpenStreetMap enormously flexible, but sometimes also a bit hard
to work with.

Whether you are contributing to OSM or using the OSM data, there are always
questions like: What tags do people use for feature X? What tags can I use
for feature Y so that it appears properly on the map? Is the tag Z described
on the wiki actually in use and where?

Taginfo helps you by showing statistics about which tags are actually in the
database, how many people use those tags, where they are used and so on. It
also gets information about tags from the wiki and from other places. Taginfo
tries to bring together all information about tags to help you understand
how they are used and what they mean. See a list of sources
taginfo uses.

You can use the data from taginfo in your own projects:

API

Taginfo data can be accessed through a REST API. See the
API documentation for the details, some general information is
on the OSM wiki.
The servers running the taginfo API do not have unlimited resources.
Please use the API responsibly. If in doubt contact the maintainers of the
site you are using or talk to us on the mailing list.

Download

If you want to play around with the data used by taginfo, you can download the
regularly updated Sqlite database files. All the preprocessing is done for you.
See the download page for a list of files. Note that
some of these files can get quite large. If you want to download them regularly,
contact the maintainers of the site you are using or talk to us on the mailing list.